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The air taxi can carry up to four passengers

The start-up, founded by 44-year-old inventor JoeBen Bevirt in 2009, is quite secretive in nature and has been successful in keeping the make and feel of the electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle under wraps.

According to limited information that is out there, the air taxi is a plane-drone hybrid with 12 rotors and has room for four passengers.

It has twice the speed of a helicopter

Bloomberg, the only media house allowed into the test facility, had this to say about the short-hop prototype aircraft named Rachel:

"The pilot managed a vertical takeoff, 15 minutes of flight in a 15-mile loop, and a safe landing. The taxi is able to fly at twice the speed of a helicopter while making about as much noise as a swarm of superbees."

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Mission

The air taxis will be used for Uber-like ride-hailing services

Joby ultimately wants to build an autonomous aircraft that can travel 150 miles at a height of few thousand feet on a single charge, and be 100 times quieter than a helicopter.

These air taxis will be mass-produced for ride-hailing services, to be priced in line with Uber and Lyft.

"Our mission is to save a billion people an hour a day," Bevirt said.

Manpower

In-house engineers make all parts of the air taxi

The company currently has about 120 employees, some of whom work at the private airfield, but most of them work from Bevirt's 500-acre ranch in Santa Cruz.

Joby has in-house engineers to make almost all the parts of its air taxi prototype, be it the body hardware or the flight-control software.

Bevirt is also planning to scale up and hire 100 additional engineers.

19 other companies also developing air taxi plans

Joby Aviation is not the first company to want to develop a flying car-like, eVTOL-based air taxi system. At least 19 other companies are developing similar air taxi plans, including the likes of Boeing, Airbus, and Uber.